Roubini On 2013's "Global Perfect Storm" And Greedy Bankers "Hanging In The Streets"

In an extended interview with Bloomberg TV, Nouriel Roubini lives up to his doom-saying reputation and goes where few have as he opines on Lieborgate that: "bankers are greedy and have been for 1000 years" and "nothing is going to change" unless there are criminal sanctions; to which he follows up - briefly silencing the interviewer, "If some people end up in jail, maybe that will teach a lesson to somebody - or somebody will hang in the streets". The professor goes on to note that the EU "summit was a failure" since markets were expecting much more and warns that without full debt mutualization, debt monetization by the ECB, or a quadrupling of the EFSF/ESM 'bazooka'; Italian and Spanish spreads will continue to blow out day after day - leading to a crisis "not in six months but in two weeks". The only entity capable of stopping this is the ECB which needs to do outright unsterilized monetization in unlimited amounts which is 'politically incorrect' to talk about and claimed to be constitutionally illegal. 2013 will be a very difficult year to find shelter as policy-makers ability to kick-the-can runs out of steam as he sees the possibility of a 'Global Perfect Storm' of a euro-zone collapse, a US double-dip, a China & EM hard-landing, and a war in the Middle East. Dr. Doom is back.

Must watch 9 minutes of reality:

On Lieborgate:

Nothing has changed since the financial crisis. The incentives of the banks is to cheat - doing things that are either illegal or immoral. The only way to avoid that is to break up these financial supermarkets. There are no chinese walls and massive conflicts of interest.

On Greed:

Bankers are greedy - they have been for 1000 years.

On Sanctions:

There should be criminal sanctions. Noone has gone to jail since the global financial crisis. The banks do things that are illegal and at best they get a slapped with a fine. If some people end up in jail, maybe that will teach a lesson to somebody - or somebody will hang in the streets.

On TBTF banks:

There are more conflicts of interest today than four years ago. The banks that were too big to fail and now they are even bigger. Things are worse - not better.

On The EU Summit:

The summit was a failure. The markets were expecting much more.

Either you have debt mutualization (to reduce the spread), or you have debt monetization by the ECB, or the bazooka of the EFSF/ESM has to be quadrupled - otherwise the spreads on Italy and Spain are going to blow up day after day. Otherwise you will have another bigger crisis not in six months from now but in the next two weeks.

On The ECB saving the world:

The only entity capable of stopping this is the ECB which needs to do outright unsterilized monetization in unlimited amounts which is 'politically incorrect' to talk about and claimed to be constutionally illegal.

On Debt mutualization:

It is not just Germany that is resistant but other core nations including The Netherlands, Austria, and Finland. Finland doesn't even want to accept the recent indirect mutualization of the summit liabilities (of the EFSF/ESM).

On kicking the can:

By 2013, the ability of policy makers to kick the can down the road is going to run out of steam, and in the euro zone the slow motion train wreck will become a fast motion train wreck. The US seems close to stall-speed and an economic recession. The landing of China is becoming harder and EM nations (and BRICs) are sharply slowing down. And finally the potential for war between Israel, the US, and Iran - which will double oil prices overnight.

On 2013 being worse than 2008:

Worse because like 2008 you will have an economic and financial crisis but unlike 2008, you are running out of policy bullets. In 2008, you could cut rates; do QE1, QE2; you could do fiscal stimulus; you could backstop/ringfence/guarantee banks and everybody else. Today, more QEs are becoming less and less effective because the problems are of solvency not liquidity. Fiscal deficits are already so large and you cannot bail out the banks because 1) there is a political opposition to it; and 2) governments are near-insolvent - they cannot bailout themselves let alone their banks. The problem is that we are running out of policy rabbits to pull out of the hat!

meh. With all that caesium 137 and xenon from Fukushima, why worry about silly microbes? Nothing like hard gamma radiation to finish them off.

Oh ya, and us.

The entire northern hemisphere may become off-limits with combined leakage from the 3/4 ton plutonium melt-down in reactor 3 and the combined reactor 4 cooling pond if it fails to cool - 4000 rods all rolling into each other - could create nuclear fire & explosions the likes of which would be seen from VERY FAR away in space.

soft metal rock and hard place. if the euro heads toward
parity the dollar strength should create a huge
btfd situation in pms. if it doesn't happen
watch out, if it does happen, watch out. if you can't find supply when the price in dollars collapses
watch out. if the premium spikes or creeps up
steady ....
thank god for the pleasures of boating.
.
and another thing.... all these experts talking
about regulation talk past the word "regulation"
and its meaning. it is not about stuffing pork
into a regulatory bill over 2000 pages. it is about
rules that fucking apply at all times, period. these
clowns today want to play baseball with no bases,
no foul line, no strike zone and no score keeper;
all so they can basically dictate what the score is
whenever they need some money. please, let us get
with the game and program someday. oops, too late

I think that it's about MORE than just "regulation." We've had PLENTY Of "regulation." What's been missing is ENFORCEMENT! Sadly, as the importance of energy goes (battling entropy and all), the more energy we put into tracking and clamping down on all these ever-increasing hocus-pocus-producing clowns the less energy we have for actually living! Although I'd feel better to see the clowns whacked good and hard, I'm afraid that EROEI is going to push us toward systems that have no capacity to even think about such complexities ("derivatives" etc.).

Exactly, It is the politicians that have the power to reign in the banker idiots and they choose NOT to. It is the politicians that should "hang" (I say this only to paraphrase Roubini, I would NEVER want to harm a politician, but if someone did harm a politician I would understand) first.

The banksters already have a got out of jail free plan . The banksters will have governments pass new laws making LIBOR fraud a criminal offense . The implication LIBOR fraud wasn't a crime before the new law . Like robbing plebs in a barrel . Watch for political slogans like; We need strong legislation with stiff penalties to make sure this doesn't happen again .

“The only entity capable of stopping this (Global Perfect Storm) is the ECB which needs to do outright unsterilized monetization in unlimited amounts which is 'politically incorrect' to talk about and claimed to be constitutionally illegal.” –Roubini summarized

Roubini’s problem is, that like Keynes, he is an elitist. He believes the great unwashed are not important except as pieces of the economic puzzle. It’s not like they are people; they are just part of the human picture. And he is able to stand back and look at all this economic sound and fury and comment on it.

Both he and Keynes divorced themselves from the people. It’s like the rest of us are in a petri dish and they’re poking us to see how we’re going to react. And then they go off to lunch.

Interestingly G. Edward Griffin had one of the clearest, most fundamental explanations of how monetizing works with the Fed that includes foreign IOUs and now will soon relate accordingly to the ECB if all goes according to script.

Said Griffin in a speech: The U.S. Federal Reserve isThe Creature from Jekyll Island:

“The Monetary Control Act of 1980 has made it possible for the Creature (the Federal Reserve) to monetize virtually any debt instrument, including IOUs from foreign governments. The apparent purpose of this legislation is to make it possible to bail out those governments which are having trouble paying the interest on their loans from American banks. When the Fed creates fiat American dollars to give foreign governments in exchange for their worthless bonds, the money path is slightly longer and more twisted, but the effect is similar to the purchase of U.S. Treasury Bonds. The newly created dollars go to the foreign governments, then to the American banks where they become cash reserves. Finally, they flow back into the U.S money pool (multiplied by nine) in the form of additional loans. The cost of the operation once again is born by the American citizen through the loss of purchasing power. Expansion of the money supply, therefore, and the inflation that follows, no longer even require federal deficits. As long as someone is willing to borrow American dollars, the cartel will have the option of creating those dollars specifically to purchase their bonds and, by so doing, continue to expand the money supply.”

Human beings need predators DBA governments like they need holes in their heads.

Human beings need predators DBA banksters like they need holes in their heads.

Eliminate predators... and life could be good.

To attempt to come to terms with predators never works, but human beings today are too braindamaged and detached from reality to distinguish up versus down, much less predator versus benevolent collaborator.

The fundamental story of human history is predators versus producers. The predators won. Humans are finished.

The "problem" is that there aren't enough PHYSICAL resources to be had to support exponential growth.

Watch animals when they start to sense that there's not enough food available. My wife put out a bird feeder (had some wild bird food that she thought would be a "treat" for the chickens- not! so we had to use it up) and I was amazed to see how the birds would fight for plentiful food even!

My point is that it's human nature. However, it's not like humans are totally all about competition, as I doubt that we'd have gotten to a population size of 7+ billion if we were more competitive than cooperative.

All that we're seeing is quite predictable as a population overruns its resource base. At the micro level everyone plays deceptively and the REAL macro level is never discussed. Yeah, nothing like being able to comprehend one's death: most life forms don't possess this "luxury."

I was amazed to see how the birds would fight for plentiful food even!

_________________________

They probably do not fight for plentiful food. They want to spend the less time possible eating as eating is one of the vulnerable moments a predator could choose to swoop in. A lone bird shall display the same behaviour.

US citizen comprehension of nature. It has to be human nature, not US citizen nature.

Which is apparently why you (and only you) can comprehend and accept your extreme and nonsensical wild flights of bigotry under your self-made label of 'US Citizenism'.

Is your brain of the dodo variety, or more of the chicken? I am guessing the latter, given how frequently you squawk gibberish in this forum and then run away after having your virulent and retarded bigotry challenged as if your head had just been cut off.

2) And ignorant and apathetic populace that lets the human predator class set up tyrannical systems and then ignorantly support said systems.

My mind is blown now that "liberals' support and defend international war crimes (Libya, Syria), funding al Qaeda (Libya, Syria), covering up gun running to Mexican drug cartels ("OBama has to teacdh th eRepbulcians a lesson for not playing ball" - I kid you not, that was the response), etc.

I find it awful hard to believe in population wide mind control, but...

In case you hadn't noticed, the volume of earth and universe are BIG --- as in "chock full of resources". I suspect the "resources" you refer to are those resources that must be produced to exist in sufficient quantity [and quality] to support 7 billion hungry human monkeys.

But produced is exactly the relevant concept in this conversation, whether anyone chooses to notice or not. The FACT is, the natural non-human processes of nature lead to sufficient food, fresh water and other goods to support 10s of millions of humans on planet earth.

To create enough for 7 billion hungry human apes requires production. That is a simple, fundamental, inescapable fact. Given productive behavior and the absence of human predators, planet earth has sufficient resources to support 10 billion humans in relative luxury. If and when humans get their sorry butts off this planet, it is absolute, completely, utter insanity to even utter the phrase "insufficient resources". What is insufficient is productive behavior, not resources.

I keep saying these words - produce, produced, production, productive. because they are the fundamental issue, and the single most fundamental story of mankind. Because we all must return to the following core, crucial, fundamental fact:

option #1: The actions of predators is compatible with the survival of tens of millions of humans.

option #2: The actions of producers is compatible with many billions of humans living well on planet earth, and with unlimited googleplex of humans living extraordinary lives in the universe.

The human population of earth only grew beyond a few 10s of millions when significant numbers of humans started to be producers, not predators. This is the most fundamental fact of the story of mankind, whether anyone chooses to notice or not.

But predators have taken over and now utterly dominate human behavior, and honest, productive, benevolent humans are getting increasingly unwilling to risk their time, effort and wealth just to be told they are evil, then get fed upon.

The revoltingly sick part of the situation is this. The predators would have no power if the producers simply refused to submit. However, the producers submitted enough, and for long enough, that the predators set up a scam wherein they braindamaged and corrupted the vast majority of human beings, and set up a system in which they steal and distribute enough of the wealth created by producers to a [near] majority of the population in exchange for votes and sanction.

So now the predators have taken control, but such a system inherently cannot surive for the reasons specified above (see the options). As producers slowly give up, and become less productive, the quality of life for all but the high-level predators will decline markedly... until finally humans will start dying off in droves. Watch for that in the next couple decades.

Why producers cannot organize, withdraw their support, and set up a voluntary collaborative is beyond me. Perhaps they will, eventually, but so far signs are few and far between.

Human beings are finished. Good riddens - the vast majority of them deserve it.

Bankers might have been greedy for 1000 years but US citizens for sure have been profiting for selective disrespect of their own laws for 236 years and five days. And there wont be a change in the trend.

I seriously hate it when people (or the media) portrays greed as something "evil". We are ALL greedy, there is NOTHING wrong with greed. It's as human desire as eating or sex. Without greed there would be no capitalism, without capitalism there would be no economy. Greed is NOT the problem! A fucked up system where the balance is distorted is.

There is the kind of "greed" where one wants to work hard to feed one's family.

There is another kind of "greed" where one has a lot of stuff and political influence and views everyone else as a threat to their position of power, so they create a fraudulent money system to impoverish the threat, they dumb down their schooling, the put neurotoxins in the water and pesticides in their food, etc...

We've had so many potential perfect storms over the last 12 years that most simply don't give them much weight anymore. Even I find myself now doubting them given governments and banks ability to change the rules at will.

As such, after years of holding off building a dream home, I'm now in the process and scheduled to complete by later summer 2013.

I still fear the worst but life is life and how many more years can I hold off?